Turin Shroud 'the creation of a Renaissance artist'

The Turin Shroud is neither an authentic cloth in which Christ's body was
wrapped nor a medieval forgery, but the creation of early Renaissance artist
Giotto, according to new book by an Italian art historian.

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The shroud is owned by the Vatican but is kept in a special protective chamber in a chapel in Turin CathedralPhoto: AP

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After months of analysis, Luciano Buso claims to have found several 15s and Giotto's name hidden in the imprint of Christ's face and hands

Luciano Buso claims to have found Giotto di Bondone's signature hidden in the 14ft-long, sepia-coloured burial cloth, as well as the number 15.

The historian believes that the number is a reference to 1315, and that the artist was commissioned in that year to come up with an exact copy of the relic because the original was badly damaged after centuries of being hawked around the Holy Land and Europe.

Mr Buso, who has laid out his controversial thesis in a new book, said the idea that the existing shroud was created in 1315 agrees with modern carbon dating tests which dated the fabric to the early 14th century.

He told The Daily Telegraph that he believes the original was indeed the sheet used to cover Christ's body but that it disintegrated, or was lost or burned, sometime after the copy was made.

After months of analysis, he claims to have found several 15s and Giotto's name hidden in the imprint of Christ's face and hands – a means by which the artist stamped his mark on his work.

They had not been detected by any of the dozens of experts who have pored over the shroud because they were created by cryptic patterns of brushstrokes and are almost invisible to the naked eye, he said.

It was natural that Giotto was chosen for the task by the Church because he was "one of the best known and most able painters of the medieval age", said Mr Buso, an art restorer from Treviso near Venice.

His controversial theory will revive the centuries-old debate over the authenticity of the relic, which appears to show the imprint of a man with long hair and a beard whose body bears wounds consistent with crucifixion.

It was first brought to Europe after the crusades and according to one theory was guarded by the Knights Templar during the 13th and 14th centuries. It was then said to have passed in 1453 to the Savoy family of France.

In the 1980s radiocarbon dating tests suggested that it was a medieval forgery, although those results were later disputed.

The shroud is owned by the Vatican but is kept in a special protective chamber in a chapel in Turin Cathedral.

However, Prof Bruno Barberis, the director of the Shroud of Turin Museum, was highly sceptical of the theory.

"Firstly, physical and chemical tests have shown that the shroud is not a painting.

"Secondly, there's a long list of scholars who have enlarged images of the shroud and seen all sorts of things that don't exist – a crown of thorns, words in Aramaic and Greek and Latin. "It's like looking at the moon and thinking you can see eyes, a nose and a mouth."